“[S]haring funds between the Athletics Department and the [University of Iowa] is a good idea; it would go a long way toward alleviating the university’s budget woes and prevent the Athletics Department from being an essentially independent corporation using the UI’s name, trademarks, and academic allure.”
With state funds falling, public big-time sports universities are wondering why they get so little of the tens of millions generated by their programs. Administrators patiently explain that coaches need millions and millions of dollars in compensation every year just to get by, but students and faculty aren’t listening. Here’s the editorial board of UI’s newspaper:
The university’s Athletics Department predicts revenues in excess of $70 million for fiscal 2011. With the UI facing an $8 million decrease in state appropriations, there’s a cogent argument for at least pulling enough from the athletics budget to make up the difference.
After all:
Kinnick Stadium will [soon] be rumbling with more than 70,000 rabid football fans, many of them university students. Few will probably take the time to consider the sheer magnitude of wealth concentrated around them…
July 22nd, 2011 at 12:05PM
hmm, not much appetite in general for sharing the wealth here in the midwest, after all the people are voting with their dollars as the Invisible Hand has commanded…
July 22nd, 2011 at 5:06PM
Here at the University of Minnesota (as at most universities) the athletic department receives an annual multi-million dollar subsidy from the general fund of the University. See Section 5 of University Inc. Part II at http://ptable.blogspot.com/2011/02/draft-as-university-transforms-itself.html#links.
There is a solution that would enable universities to disentangle themselves from the big business of the major revenue sports. The football teams and the basketball teams should be organized as separate corporations. The university would grant a license to the corporations to use the name of the university for the teams. The fee for the license would be a percentage of the revenues generated from ticket sales, broadcasting rights, advertising, etc. The university would use the license fee to support the non-revenue sports that it retains, such as track and swimming. This is a solution that would allow the sports fans to continue to enjoy the games and would allow the universities to focus on education, research, and public service–the reasons for their existence.
July 22nd, 2011 at 11:25PM
Good solution, Michael. The fact that it defenestrates the NCAA would be a nice side-effect. Although they would all probably just wind up in jobs running these new corporations…
July 23rd, 2011 at 9:33AM
more like an asinine solution. it’s the equivalent of, when your roof leaks, building a complicated system of drains to funnel the water away, instead of just fixing the stupid roof. if the problem is that athletics cost more than they bring in, and they take time and attention away from the university’s real mission, then the solution is to either make them pay for themselves by cutting expenses, or getting rid of them altogether. spinning them off into baroque legal creations is not a solution, unless the problem is how to get the university counsel more income. In fact, it’s how the University of Kentucky is already set up- athletics are a separate corporation, the UK Athletic Association is a separate corporation licensed to use the university’s name. They’re still not making any money, and it’s still a massive distraction for the university.
July 23rd, 2011 at 12:22PM
If UK athletics is run by a separated corporate entity and they pay a licensing fee to UK, but UK still pays the costs of the program, then 1) UK is operating outside NCAA institutional control rules and 2) you’re doing it wrong.